U.s. Probes Mystery Bombings In Idaho

September 30, 1986|By James Coates, Chicago Tribune.

COEUR D`ALENE, IDAHO — Federal, state and local authorities late Monday were investigating a series of bombings that rocked the federal building and two other sites, causing widespread damage but no injuries. A fourth bomb was found at an armed forces recruiting center and was detonated.

Although authorities said no one had claimed responsibility for the explosions, the area has been a hotbed of extreme and violent right-wing politics.

The explosions occurred within less than an hour at widely separated locations: the small federal building downtown which houses the post office and district offices for Idaho`s two senators, a restaurant on the east end of town and a west end luggage store.

A fourth bomb was found on the roof of the recruiting center, near the post office, but was detonated harmlessly by federal and local bomb squad experts later in the day.

``I believe people are scared,`` Police Chief Frank Premo said as he stood on the city`s main street, one block from a maze of cordoned-off areas marking the blast sites. ``But for today, at least, I think it`s over.``

``We`re having an emergency at this time,`` said a spokeswoman for the Kootenai County Sheriff`s Department.

The explosions came almost two weeks to the hour after the bombing of the home of a Couer D`Alene Catholic priest who has been active in opposing area neo-Nazi groups that claim to have plans for moving into the area in large numbers and creating a ``White American Bastion.``

A spokesman for the FBI in Butte, Mont., the bureau`s regional headquarters, said that agents would ``of course`` attempt to determine if the bombing of Rev. Bill Wassmuth`s home was related to Monday`s blasts.

But the official added that there was no evidence linking any group to any of the bombings.

As with Monday`s blasts, no one claimed responsibility for bombing the priest`s house.

The target of one bomb apparently was Lohman Catron, owner of The Luggage Rack, where the bomb in question detonated alongside his desk, causing extensive damage.

Catron, however, was late to work and hadn`t arrived when the bomb exploded about 9:17 a.m., his associate Jim Boyer told reporters.

``If Lohman had been on time, he would be history,`` Boyer told the Spokane Spokesman Review shortly after the blast.

The restaurant, Jax Family Dining, was bombed about 10 minutes later, according to John Rooney, Idaho state police spokesman.

Speculation about a neo-Nazi link came because of the well-publicized conflict between many community leaders here and the Aryan Nations/Church of Jesus Christ Christian, which maintains a heavily-guarded compound 10 miles north of here near the tourist hamlet of Hayden Lake.

In July the controversial church held its annual World Aryan Congress, at which participants burned a cross and spent three days listening to hate-filled sermons by a variety of national hate group leaders.

In response to the meeting, Father Wassmuth, director of the Couer D`Alene Human Relations Council, staged an anti-Nazi rally in this community of 18,000 people near Spokane, Wash., which outdrew the neo-Nazis by 20 to 1. The Coeur D`Alene Press and North Idaho College, site of the human-rights rally, both received telephoned bomb threats.

Federal prosecutors have linked members of the neo-Nazi movement with at least two bombings in the past two years, one at the only synagogue in Boise, Idaho, and the other at a pornographic movie theater in Seattle.

Those attacks were engineered by members of The Order, a spinoff group that was formed at the Hayden Lake compound called Aryan Nations.

Ten Order members were convicted last year on racketeering charges stemming from a crime spree that included three armored car robberies, the assassination of a Denver radio talk show host, the two bombings, several bank robberies and other crimes.